Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/47

 There isn't a woman in town who paints, Lou explained timidly. I know how they do in Paris. I've seen them when I've been with you. I suppose it's quite fin de siècle there (it took Ella some days to learn that Lou used this popular phrase as a synonym for fashionable) but nobody here would understand. They'd just think you were fast.

I can't get along without a little make-up, the Countess replied, in a conciliatory manner, apparently with morigeration, not wishing to quarrel so soon with her sister, but I'll use as little as possible. You've no idea what a fright I look without it. Besides it gives me confidence. After my lips are made up I can say things I couldn't have said before.

Silently, Lou regarded her sister. Women past middle-age in Maple Valley did not hold personal beauty as an end in itself, she reflected. Ella evidently considered it important to look young. Well, she was a Countess; perhaps they would permit her an eccentricity or two.

The horses drew up before the white brick house, built in the early seventies, which the Countess remembered so well. Set high above the street on a grass terrace, which was supported three feet above the level of the side-walk by a stone wall, this mansion was surrounded by great oak-trees, their spreading branches shading the well-kept lawn.

Why, it hasn't changed at all! Ella cried. Not